


Empty Log

by cruisedirector



Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Angst, F/M, POV First Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2001-02-02
Updated: 2001-02-02
Packaged: 2017-10-06 23:22:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/58852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cruisedirector/pseuds/cruisedirector
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Though I tried to ignore "Fair Haven," Janeway would not allow me to let it pass without comment.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Empty Log

**Author's Note:**

> This does not qualify as a story. I refer people looking for a positive spin on "Fair Haven" to SuzVoy's "On the Wooden Floor" and SrMaryKathryn's "Calm Before the Storm" instead.

He fucks holograms.

I don't know why this should come as such a surprise. He fucks Cardassian spies disguised as obnoxious Bajoran terrorists. He fucks ex-Borg who force him to mind-meld. He fucks simpering blondes from species that have the ability to wipe themselves out of his memory, if not out of my handwritten logs.

Why does the discovery that he fucks holograms seem so much worse?

I remember how betrayed I felt when I realized he had slept with Riley Frasier. Like getting kicked in the guts, watching him watching her, thinking I might have to take her and her little collective onto my ship, where I might have to watch them together for the rest of the voyage. I told him I was sorry she'd only been using him, but secretly I couldn't have been more relieved. As for the mysterious Kellin, I still get upset when I reread that log, though I don't remember the woman. My stomach even turns a little when I think about him with Seska, even though that was over before I met him, and I think he tries to forget it ever happened.

At least I'm sure he never fucked her hologram.

Maybe I'm jealous. I could have been fucking holograms all along, but I haven't. Never have, in fact, not even really tempted. I suppose I made Lord Burleigh so ugly for a reason. I know others do it, and never gave much thought to how I felt about it. The way I feel about most sex toys, I suppose -- they're fine for others, but not for me. Same with casual sex. It may be superficially enjoyable, but it's not what I'm about.

I didn't think it was what he's about, either.

I hated him for Riley Frasier, but I understood. I never doubted he had real feelings for her. I hated him for that too, but I knew what he had gone through. What I had put him through. Even if I could never completely forgive him, it didn't change deep down how I felt about him. Same with Kellin. Of course he'd be attracted to a woman who loved him unconditionally, who offered herself even when he feigned professional disinterest. Not hard to see a reflection there. I suppose that by the time Kellin came aboard, I must have been angrier at myself than at him for what I'd let slip away.

But he fucks holograms. Despite us all, probably, no matter what he was feeling for which live woman. Today he sat beside me on the bridge, laughing at me -- not because he knows I'm thinking about fucking a hologram, but because he can't believe I'm so uptight about it. Everyone fucks holograms, right? Tom created a woman at Sandrine's for just that purpose. Harry wanted to fuck a hologram, half the ship knew about that, and half the ship knew about it when she preferred Tuvok to Harry, before we all knew she wasn't really a hologram. No one cared. I overheard B'Elanna once talking about a man she'd met in that tropical holoprogram -- I'm sure she fucked that one. I'd bet ten replicator rations on Seven doing it too -- who else is she going to fuck?

Listen to me. All this profanity I'm recording for posterity. Oh, but I'm angry -- I'm angry because it's easier to feel rage than the other feelings. Too many memories I have to change. Those evenings he left my quarters after dinner, when I thought he needed to be alone with his desires, as I did...he was fucking holograms. The nights I lay awake wishing I could rationalize what he wanted...he could have replaced me with a hologram. For all I know he's fucked me as a hologram. Please don't let me find out if he did. I couldn't stand it.

This Michael Sullivan...I own him. I made him a little taller, a little less scruffy, a little more like the Chakotay I remember from a long time ago. I can fuck Michael Sullivan -- that's all it will be, fucking, not making love -- one can't make love to a hologram. If I don't like something, I can just change it. Add, delete, enlarge, reshape, slow down, start over, one more time. Choreograph, change the setting, put the right words in his mouth. How very romantic.

It's awful. But I feel awful. He fucks holograms. He can joke about it, and smirk at me like he knows what I'm thinking, and what I'm feeling. Maybe he'd rather have me fucking a hologram than some other live person. Or maybe he takes it as proof that I'm finished with him, so he has no responsibility towards me. Either way, underneath his ostensible concern for me -- his wish that I'd have some fun -- I can't help but seeing something ugly. Perverted.

Maybe he thinks that if fuck a hologram, if I learn to love a hologram, if I compromise, if I stop feeling love so deeply I'm afraid I'll forget everything else, maybe then I'll be able to transfer those ephemeral trick-of-light feelings onto him for a little while. And if it doesn't work out, there's always the holodeck, where I could find a custom-made version of him, where I could make love not to the man but to my own image, reflected in the dancing photons and the force fields that contain us.

He does it. Maybe he prefers them, maybe that's why he never really fought for me. To think I thought he was trying to protect me. He spends himself on non-sentient, programmable women made of light and illusion. Why reach for me when he can hold his fantasies, a different one every night? A hologram won't be fickle, won't grow old, won't get pregnant, won't be distracted by duty, won't get hurt or angry if he decides to leave and never come back.

There's no point in being hurt or angry. It won't change anything, it won't change him. I should go to the holodeck now. Michael Sullivan won't ever have to know that I fucked him for revenge. Nor will Michael Sullivan have to know that he's just a substitute, and he'll always be a substitute, even if he says he loves me. What does love mean, anyway, to someone who doesn't care if it's not real?

He fucks holograms.

Fuck him.


End file.
